Deus Ex Machina
by paperbkryter
Summary: Takes place after the events in Swan Song. Sam watches, and waits, and wonders what comes next for himself and Dean. Did he do the right thing when he asked for Dean's promise?
1. Chapter 1

Having a few years of higher learning under my belt doesn't make me a scholar, or a philosopher. I don't have any right to weigh in on the age-old debates regarding life and death – primarily when it starts and when it ends. I don't think that's something we'll ever really pin down.

But if experience counts for anything I've come to believe that there's no such thing as death. Matter doesn't go away, it just becomes something else. Bodies rot, turn to dust, but they still exist. Spirits leave a body, but they don't just _stop._ They just go somewhere else – Heaven, Hell, or somewhere in between. Rebirth is real. Demons and Angels swap bodies like fashions. Death isn't the cessation of life, it's simply a different state of being.

It still sucks.

Why? Because there are rules. Rules govern the body, and they sure as hell govern the spirit or else every building, every object, every square inch of ground on the planet, would be haunted. Ghosts are tied to things, bound by rules. Some haunt the place where they died, unable to forget the trauma. Some haunt an object – the weapon that killed them, a piece of jewelry they cherished, a favorite painting - there's always a catch. There's always a knot that has to be unraveled before a ghost can cut loose on its own. We told that girl, Molly, it was unfinished business. She needed to know what happened to her husband. I thought I tied up all my loose ends pretty good, but I guess not.

Ghosts can be tied to people too. Shouldn't be surprised I'm stuck with Dean. Neither one of us can let go, never could, and there's probably some psychological syndrome to define it with, but I don't have the answer. Even our dysfunction is dysfunctional, and it's certainly not normal, or normal for being _ab_normal. We're joined at the hip. No, correction, we're joined at the _soul,_ because Lucifer was right about one thing - I'm one half of a whole. He just got the other half wrong, but what do you expect from such an arrogant bastard?

I don't know how I got here. I don't really know_ why_ I'm here. All I do know is I'm not stuck in a cage with two archangels who are as pissed as hell at me for fucking up their Apocalypse. Given that choice, I'll stick with Dean.

I see things I'm not supposed to see, and I mean that in more than one way. This place, this thin slice of existence between Heaven (or Hell) and Earth, is sort of a dumping ground for the unexplained. I guess the best way to describe it would be to call it a parallel universe just beyond normal human senses. Limbo, maybe? There's only a thin layer between this and the "real" world. Some people, psychics, can tap into it, and once they do, human rules don't apply. You get a key to unlock the door to this world and it's anything goes. Trust me on that one. Been there. Done that.

Angels and demons hang here when they're not possessing some poor schmuck. The Almost-Apocalypse really got them all stirred up though and I've been told there aren't nearly as many as there used to be. The few that do pass through usually ignore human spirits. We don't mean much to them. That's one good thing. They can't really fuck with me anymore – not here, not as long as I follow the rules.

Reapers are the masters of this universe. This is their realm. I've seen Tessa a few times. I once asked her if she could cut me loose, but she can't. She said, "This prison has two keys, and one won't work without the other."

Nuclear bomb analogy? Nice. Appropriate. It'd take a nuke to pry me and Dean apart. If death can't do it, what else can?

Tessa told Dean that spirits become ghosts – the type we used to hunt - because over the years they get desperate and angry. I've been desperate and angry all my life. I don't think I have any of that left for the afterlife. I can see how it can make you nuts though. You can look but not touch. There's not much to do _but_ haunt somebody. Poltergeists are defined as "restless spirits." I can see why. I've been real tempted to throw a few rocks around myself. It's fucking _boring_ here, especially since I can't change the channel. All I have to do is watch Dean live his life, the life I made him promise to live. That hurts, man. It really does.

You can take a wild animal and put it in a cage, give it shelter, food, water, make it more comfortable and safe than it could ever be in the wild, but it still won't thrive. It's not that it can't be content, or even find some sort of happiness, it's just that the bottom line remains the same. It's still a wild animal.

My brother was never meant to be domesticated. He tries though, God he tries. He wants it real bad too, I know he does. He loves Lisa, and Ben, and the new kid on the block, Junior. Everything Dad wasn't, Dean is trying to be. Dad wasn't much of a role model. Dean's idea of fatherhood comes from those old shows he watches on TVLand. He's knocking himself out to become Ward Cleaver, and in a screwed up sort of way it's working. He coached Ben's little league team, and Dean knows shit about baseball. For Ben, though, he learned. I guess I shouldn't be surprised Dean is taking so well to fatherhood. He was more a father to me than Dad ever was.

Dean loves the hell out of Ben, even if he doesn't know the truth. I don't know why Lisa lied to him about it. Maybe she thought it would give him an out – or herself an out – if they couldn't hook up again. I don't know why Dean hasn't called her on it either. Junior could be Ben's clone, and there's no doubt _he's_ Dean's. I wasn't supposed to see that either. Junior's conception was – very interesting. I know now why Dean nicknamed Lisa "Gumby Girl."

The nickname "Junior" bugs the crap out of Lisa. It's a joke that stuck. His name is John Robert, after Dad and Bobby. His initials are JR, so Dean started calling him Junior right out of the starting gate. Dean was there when he was born, and was the first to hold him. Lisa asked him if he wanted to name the baby Sam. I was kinda flattered. We'd only met in passing, but I guess that just shows you how much she loves Dean.

Dean didn't say anything at first when she suggested it, but then he handed Junior back to her and shook his head. "No." It choked him up so he could hardly talk. "No," he said. "I can't."

It's a wound that hasn't healed, even after ten years. I've been gone ten years now – seems like a nice, even number doesn't it? A decade. Ben's in his first year of college. Athletic scholarship. Junior is in second grade, and smart, real smart. I've watched them grow up just a little more every day for the last ten years. I've been right there with Dean on the pitcher's mound and in the delivery room. I saw him tear up when Ben got his diploma, and was at his side when he helped Junior take his first steps. I'm _always_ here.

I've also been there, late at night when the kids and Lisa are sleeping, when Dean sits alone in the dark and talks to me – sort of. It's just a whisper usually.

"_Sammy."_

That's all. Just my name, nothing else. No tears. He doesn't need them to convince me or anyone else of anything. The pain in his voice says it all.

You know Alistair may have been able to claim he broke Dean in Hell, but I've got the dubious honor of having shattered him here on Earth. He's going through a different kind of torture now. It's killing him, and God, I'd stop it if I could. The only way is to get free of him but that's not going to happen any time soon.

See, he knows I'm here. I don't mean consciously. He doesn't _know_ I'm here, but he can sense something. They all can. We've seen it before, dozens of times. People can't let go any more than spirits can, or will. The grieving process never ends, the wounds never heal, and they can't understand why the pain never stops. That's the definition of "haunted." I'm a little surprised Dean hasn't figured it out, but then, it's hard to think straight when you're hurting so bad.

It's infuriatingly simple. Dean won't let me go, and I _can't _let him go. I've tried, but I can't. There's something else at work here, and I'll be damned if I know what it is.

* * *

I'm not desperate, or angry. I haven't gone nutty and started throwing the furniture around – not yet anyway. Sometimes I get bored, but even that's gotten better over the years. I can do things, move things. I read a lot, anything I can get my hands on. I'm careful not to leave things out of place. Lisa and the kids might not notice, but Dean would, and I still don't want him to know for sure I'm here. As uncomfortable as it might be sometimes, he wants this life, and I want him to have it. I can't screw that up.

I honestly don't know what he'd do if he did find out I've been hanging with him in spirit for the past decade. Try to free me? Send me packing? How? No body. It's long gone. There's nothing left to burn. There's nothing left to bring me back to either. I doubt even an angel could resurrect my corporeal body, and they probably shouldn't. The last time I saw it, it was occupied by Lucifer. It's gone, he's gone, and it should definitely stay that way.

What really scares me is the thought that Dean might try to join me here. There's been more than one time I've seen him out in the garage, sitting in the Impala with a bottle of Jack Daniels and a loaded gun in his lap. The first time was not long after I...left. It wasn't the bottle he raised to his lips - he'd finished the whiskey by then - but the gun. He had it cocked too. He'd be dead if I hadn't been there. I managed to work up enough energy to throw a little electromagnetic spark at the Impala's wiring, and the horn went off like a trumpet.

If Dean hadn't been so completely trashed he might have wondered why the Chevy's horn went off by itself, but he was and he didn't. If he were more trashed than he was he might have accidentally pulled the trigger when he flinched. Instead he just dropped the gun down into the floorboards. By the time he found it, Lisa had made her way to the garage. She took the gun away from him, held him through the inevitable break-down, and then put him to bed.

That was the first attempt. He's made others over the years, but he's never taken it that far again. He'll drink himself unconscious and never get the safety off his gun. They say suicide is a sin, but I can't fault him for it. I've been there. In a way, I _am_ there. No, let's be honest. Let me be honest with myself. We both knew damn well if I jumped into that cage I wasn't coming out again, at least not in the traditional sense. It _was_ suicide.

I'm not going to lie about it anymore. I dare anyone to try to keep going knowing you were responsible for the freakin' Apocalypse. And my family? We won't even begin to go there. Even the ones I had left – Dean, Bobby – I lost their trust, their respect. I lost respect for myself. I lost _everything_, including my humanity. My last Hunt wasn't for Lucifer, not entirely. My last Hunt was to take out the monster I saw standing there in the mirror every morning of my life.

You can argue that it wasn't my fault, that it was destiny, or just fate fucking around with me, or whatever, but that doesn't bring back everyone who suffered because I was "chosen." It doesn't make Dean forget Hell, or clean up the mess inside his head. Of course me being dead obviously doesn't help Dean either. I'm dragging him down like a damn anchor.

I'm scared of the idea of him dying, but at the same time I don't think I'd be too sorry if he did join me. This, the "in-between" is a pretty lonely place. Nobody to talk to, not much to do but replay every moment of your life trying to figure out what got screwed up when and what you could have done to change it. I had a lot to think about, stuff I didn't want to think about. There was nothing else to do.

If Tessa is reaping anywhere nearby she'll stop to say hello sometimes. She has a soft spot for Dean. Reapers aren't known for their sentimentality, but Tessa's had too many encounters with the notorious Winchesters. We tend to leave a mark on people (and apparently non-human people too) who come in contact with us. They change – sometimes for the better, sometimes for the worse.

I also get messages from Ash from time to time. He's employed a Cupid to be his go-fer. None of the messages make much sense and the Cupid insists on hugging me before he delivers them. Still, it breaks up the monotony. Ash's crazy rambling can be entertaining, and figuring out how I'm supposed to answer can be a challenge, but I can do without the hugging. I think it was Ash's Cupid that ratted me out upstairs. In a round-about way this answered the question of whether or not the angels had anything to do with snatching my soul out of Lucifer's cage just nanoseconds before the door slammed shut.

The answer was "not." They had nothing to do with it.

With the loss of Michael, Zachariah and Uriel, and by virtue of being singled out by the still AWOL, but obviously attentive God, Castiel became the new B.A.I.H. – Big Angel In Heaven. Once he knew what happened to me, he kept my existence to himself. He sometimes has trouble with a few rowdy Michael supporters looking to unlock the door and let the big guy out again – along with Lucifer and the Apocalypse. It would seriously undermine his peacekeeping efforts if they knew I was still around. I have no idea what would happen to me, or Dean, if they came looking for me. I'm glad Cas is running interference.

Lucky me. I'm universally despised. It makes me think God might be behind my last-minute reprieve after all. This place, this gray area between worlds that makes up the sum and substance of my existence, is probably the safest place for me to be right now. It's keeping me out of trouble, and keeping trouble from finding me.

The moratorium on angel/human communications is back, but it doesn't stop Cas from talking to me when he can – I'm technically not human anymore. Trust Cas to find a loophole. When he first visited he stopped just short of pulling a Cupid. The strain of holding back this seriously un-angelic gesture was written all over his face, but he held back the hug. Jimmy Novak was long gone of course, and I could see Cas' true form without getting my eyes roasted, but he still showed up looking like the Cas I knew. That was comforting. He knew it would be.

He was as clueless as I am regarding the how and why of me being here with Dean. I asked whether or not I should let him know I'm here. Cas said, "I think, when the right time comes, you'll know it, but now is not that time."

When, though? And more importantly. Why? What event will make it so I'll have to reveal the truth and screw up Dean's apple pie life? I'm not sure I want to know.

* * *

It was inevitable that Dean went Hunting again. I never expected the gig to come from someone other than Bobby, or even me, but I knew one day he'd go back out on the road. It would take a lot of convincing. Whoever was doing the convincing had to be someone close to him. He'd never do it otherwise.

The request came from Ben. There's no way Dean would have said no to Ben. He came home over spring break and made his request in person, sitting out on the back deck while Dean fired up the grill. The subject matter clashed incongruously with the mundane suburban setting. They talked about spooks. Dean flipped burgers.

"A friend," Ben said. "It's for a friend."

Nobody should have been surprised the friend was a girl. Like father, like son. Lisa can deny Ben's origins all she wants but it's obvious he's a Winchester. He's probably what Dean could have been if we'd grown up normal. He's everything I always wanted to be, and reminds me a lot of myself. Just because he's in school on an athletic scholarship doesn't make him a dumbass either. He's smart, real smart. Pre-med. He wants to be an EMT. Helping people, it's in our genes I guess.

"Her parents bought a farmhouse, early nineteenth century, started renovations and something nasty showed up."

Dean illustrated the incongruity with a wave of a spatula. "I'm too old to go ghost hunting," he said.

"Dad, you're forty."

"Yeah, and you know how many Hunters make it to forty? Not many." Dean shook his head. "I'm retired."

"Uncle Bobby is still Hunting."

"Uncle Bobby is a freak of nature," Dean said affectionately. "So why don't you call him?"

"I did. He's busy with a kelpie."

When he said this, Dean rolled his eyes. Bobby thinks he's being slick when he comes up with little secret codes for what he's really doing. Hunting a kelpie is code for getting some coastline R&R. Bobby wasn't busy working, Bobby was on vacation. Ben had no way of knowing that but it didn't matter anyway. Not much could pull Bobby away from break time when he had his mind set on it. No ghost was worth the effort.

"I could always go check it out myself..." Ben said quietly.

That's when Dean gave him "The Look."

I have to give him credit, Dean is a good dad. He's figured out how to strike a balance between too much and not enough, you know? For the most part he's pretty laid back, and the kids have fun with him, sometimes too much fun if you were to ask Lisa. But they also respect him. When Dean laid down the law, he meant it. Sure, they tested him, like kids will, but they know there are reasons behind his rules. He's never uttered the words, "because I said so."

Because of a close encounter with a changeling, Ben knew what Dean did for a living before he became "Dad." Over the years he pieced together a little more of the story from things Dean did reveal and from little bits of overheard conversation between Dean and Lisa, or Dean and Bobby. He didn't know all the gory details. Even Lisa didn't know everything. Dean was pretty sketchy about what he told her, skipping a lot of the worst stuff, candy coating other things. She came to her own conclusions.

Lisa treated Dean like a man who has come home from a really bloody war, and God knows it fits. He's shell shocked and damaged, scarred for the rest of his life. He told her he went to Hell, but she only half believes it. It's figurative in her mind. It's all too real in Dean's. She knows something really bad went down, something apocalyptic, but not that it was THE Apocalypse. Regardless, whatever it was cost Dean a brother and made him stop Hunting.

There was no way he'd let Ben anywhere near that house.

Dean didn't have to raise his voice. After leveling that wilting look at Ben he focused his attention back to the grill. "You even think about it," he said quietly. "And I'll kick your ass."

"Why not? It's just a ghost."

Why not? Ask Ellen Harvelle. Or not. Dean did a pretty good job of channeling her when he turned around and snapped, "Because that's how it starts!"

Ben scowled. "I'm not going to become a Hunter, Dad..."

"You don't get it, do you?" Dean took the last burger from the grill and set the plate full of beef down on the table. "Hunting isn't a choice you make. It's...something else...a disease, I don't know. What I do know is once it gets hold of you it doesn't let go, Ben. Once you get a taste of it..." He stopped abruptly, standing there, clenching and unclenching his fists. "No. I said no. You stay the hell out of it. I'll go."

Ben's look was sympathetic, 'cause he knew he'd crossed a line somewhere. "Okay," he said softly. "Thanks."

"On one condition," Dean added. His voice got rough, real rough. Ben might not have been able to see the tears but I could. "You promise me. Promise me you'll forget about Hunting, forget it exists. There are no such things as ghosts or changelings, or shapeshifters or whatever. This is it and we're done forever."

"But..."

"I'm not going to lose you too, Ben. I swear to God I won't." This time Dean did raise his voice. "Promise me, dammit!"

In ten years Dean had never shouted at either of the boys. He'd never cursed at them. Hearing it now set Ben back a second, but startled him into stammering a promise it was pretty obvious he intended to keep. He had no interest in Hunting. Helping people, yes, but spending his life out on the road, criss- crossing the country on shitty back roads, looking for the stuff of nightmares – no.

Thank God.

* * *

Dean hadn't driven the Impala in ten years. He'd pulled it into Lisa's garage and parked it under a tarp. Sometimes, like I said, he'd go out and sit in her and drink, but most of the time she just sat there gathering dust. He had a beat up old truck he drove instead, and Lisa had an SUV. Like a lot of things in Dean's life, the Impala just _was._ She was as much a ghost as I am. There, unseen, undiscussed, but not forgotten, never forgotten.

Lisa knew something was up when she came home one afternoon and saw the Impala parked in the driveway. Dean had spent all day working on her, helped by Junior who, like Dean at the same age, stood ready and willing to hand his father tools and fetch him drinks. Junior was pretty psyched that Dean had the Impala out, but Lisa wasn't, not in the slightest. She sent John Robert inside to clean up and confronted Dean.

"Is it today?" she asked quietly.

"Is what today?" Dean shut the hood with a bang and leaned against the fender wiping his hands on a rag. "Did I forget an anniversary?"

He was pretty tired by then. He'd stayed up late, after Lisa and the kids went to bed, sorting through the trunk, making sure everything was in working order, dismantling guns, sharpening knives. Funny, Hunting is one of those things that people compare to riding a bike. You don't forget. Dean didn't. His hands knew just where to go, what to do, without conscious thought. I hadn't forgotten either. Watching Dean work - on his weapons, on the car – made me feel like nothing had changed. I'd watched him do those things so many times, over and over again, that it could have been any moment we'd shared over the years. The normalcy of it was almost painful.

"Is this the day you leave us," Lisa clarified.

Dean stopped wiping his hands and stared at her. "What?"

Lisa looked away, shifting her weight as she crossed her arms over her chest and gazed out across the lawn. "I always knew it wouldn't last, that you'd take off sooner or later. I just I thought..." She shook her head. "I don't know what I thought."

"Hey," Dean caught her by the shoulders, pulled her into his arms. She was a strong woman, Lisa, one of the reasons Dean got along with her so well, but she had her moments. This was one of them. She was crying, and trying not to let him see. He did though. "Lise, I'm not going anywhere. It's just a quick trip across the state line to check out an old house. I'll be back by morning. I swear."

She pulled back and looked at him. "A Hunt? Dean. You said..."

"I'm not Hunting. I'm...consulting. Ben's got this girlfriend - well, not _girlfriend_, but girl _friend – _and her parents think their new renovation project is haunted." He shrugged, petting Lisa's shoulder as if he were stroking a cat. "I'm just going to poke my head in, reassure them they don't have Casper hanging around in the attic, and then come home. Ben's Dad impresses girl's parents, Ben gets girlfriend."

Lisa slugged him in the shoulder. "Dean! Don't teach him to think like that."

Dean grinned and reeled her in again for a kiss. After he was done, Lisa wiped her eyes and gave him a hard stare.

"So you're not going back on the road."

"No. Absolutely not."

After a pause, Lisa added. "Do you miss it, Dean?"

His answer was much quicker, and that should have tipped her off that he was lying.

"Not in the slightest," he said.

* * *

The drive from Cicero to a little town on the Indiana-Ohio border wasn't long, but it was long enough to remind both of us that no matter what, things would never be the same.

Oh, it looked the same on the surface. Dean sat behind the wheel of the Impala in his old leather jacket, driving too fast, playing his music – classic rock, what else – much too loud. I was even in my usual spot riding shotgun, sort of. I suppose there might have been a few people we passed who could have seen me, swearing there was someone there when there wasn't. Dean couldn't see me, and that made all the difference. To tell the truth, Dean wouldn't even look in my direction. Even if he could have seen me, he wouldn't have, because he _never looked._

Dean's never been good at dealing with what he's feeling. It's always too little or too much, feast or famine. He shuts it up inside, or it completely overwhelms him, so he tries to avoid situations that cause really intense emotions. He avoided looking over at the passenger's seat because it was empty, because it reminded him of his greatest loss – and I'm not being full of myself by saying that. He wasn't making that trip to stir up bad memories, but because it was a job. He couldn't afford to let his personal shit get in the way.

As for the job - I don't know what those people were thinking when they bought the house. There wasn't anything spectacular about it. It was plain, old wooden farmhouse, the kind you see scattered all over the rural Midwest. We'd been in a blue million of them over the years. Most of them were built in a time when living was rough, and dying too. Spooks clung to those old houses like the cobwebs hanging from every corner. They hadn't left life easy, and didn't like to let go. They'd worked too hard for too long to give it all up just like that.

These were most likely to be the nasty kind of spirits too. Some of them were antisocial when they were alive, and once dead, hated the living even more. Some of them just fall apart from sheer loneliness once the last living occupant moves out and the house falls into disrepair. It's renovation that stirs them up in either case. One wants the living to leave him alone, the other has just become so used to the silence, all the commotion pushes them over the edge into full on bat-shit crazy. Angry ghosts are dangerous. Crazy ghosts are dangerous too.

Once, when I was about twelve, we had a gig de-spooking an old farmhouse that was sitting next to a brand new office complex. Because of some local restrictions regarding the razing of historical buildings, the owners of the property had left the old house standing. The ghost in residence started screwing around with the tenants of one of the new office buildings nearby so the owner called a friend, who called a friend, who called an uncle, who called Dad. We showed up and barged right in looking for the ghost. It happened to be an angry, antisocial son-of-a-bitch who had a particular disliking for kids. I was twelve, and actually looked younger, so the asshat ghost took a particularly particular dislike to me.

It was a big house, bigger and fancier than the usual old farmhouse, with a central staircase and two wings. We split up on a balcony overlooking the entryway. Dad was going to go down the hall to the west, me and Dean were to take the east – or so that's what was supposed to happen. What really happened is that Dad headed down the hall all right, but me and Dean – we never even took a single step before the spirit manifested right under our noses.

There's a reason why we use EMF detectors to hunt the supernatural. It takes energy for some of the things we Hunt to do the things they do, and they pull it from anywhere they can. They suck it up, build it up, and then tap into it when they need it. By monitoring fluctuations in electromagnetic fields we can tell if there's something unseen sucking up juice. That's also why a cold spot might indicate the presence of a spirit, because they use heat energy too.

Some spirits, angry ones in particular, use emotion to fuel themselves. Oh, they'll start out pulling from another source, but once they get going, their own anger _keeps _them going. HH Holmes' ghost out in Pennsylvania was one example. That mother was bad, real bad. I have no doubt that he'll eventually find a way out of the trap we snared him in, salt, iron and concrete be damned.

So this kid-hating spook shows up, right, and we can't even get a shot off before its got me. It chucks me over the balcony railing and as I'm falling Dean finally gets it together enough to shoot the thing. To this day I have no idea how the hell we pulled it off, but seconds later I see Dean's legs come over the railing too. He'd thrown down the shotgun and just vaulted over the edge after me in either a really daring, or a really dumb-ass attempt to save me, and it blows my mind that it actually worked.

I made a blind grab and my fingers snagged onto his boot. He'd been wearing a pair of old army boots that night and I'd grabbed onto the front, where the shoelaces laced up. If he'd been wearing motorcycle boots like the ones he wears now, my hand would have slipped right off and I'da hit the floor. I don't know if it would have killed me, but I definitely would have been damaged.

"Dad!" Dean yelled at the top of his lungs. "Dad!"

He had both hands around one of the spindles of the railing, and was having a hard time keeping his grip. It would have been hard enough to keep himself from falling, but he also had me to deal with. I was hanging onto his feet for dear life, my arms wrapped around his ankles and my face buried in his pant leg. I was pretty scared. I was even more scared when I looked up and saw the ghost crouched on the balcony, methodically beating on Dean's knuckles with her fists, prying at his fingers, trying to make him let go.

"Son of a bitch!" Snarling, Dean bit down on a yelp when she dug long nails into his skin, drawing blood. He was starting to get panicky. He was slipping fast. This time both of us yelled, "DAD!"

There was another shotgun blast. The ghost vanished, and Dad had hold of Dean's arms. It took a lot of effort, and I was terrified they were going to drop me more than once, but eventually Dad and Dean managed to get us both up over the railing to safety. Once he knew we were okay Dad spent some time both praising and chastising Dean for leaping over the balcony after me. But that's Dean. That's the story of Dean and me.

When I left for Stanford I asked Dean to come too. I wanted him to get away from Dad, to find himself, cut the strings and stop being a Dad's little marionette. I knew he'd be a pain in my ass, but I asked anyway. I owed him that much.

He refused and I went without him. It was the first of only a handful of times Dean hasn't followed me, hasn't taken that leap over the balcony rail in some heroic attempt to save my ass. The last time was in Stull Cemetery, when I took a giant leap into oblivion. I don't know what held him back, whether it was his promise, or simply the fact Lucifer had shattered virtually every bone in his face, but he didn't jump.

Since then he's come pretty close to the edge. He hasn't jumped though, not yet, but I don't know how long that's gonna last.

Dean's heartache is palpable. It's always there, lurking just under the surface like some dark predator ready to pounce. On that night, his first Hunting trip since I died, it jumped out and gut him. Just over the Ohio border he switched off the music and the tears began – the music of grief. The rest of the trip I was forced to listen to my own requiem.

I would have preferred Metallica.

* * *

Like I said, I don't know what those people were thinking when they bought themselves a run-down farmhouse. It wasn't worth crap, and definitely not worth saving. They could tear it down and rebuild a modern look-a-like for half of what it would cost to fix the original. The place was a wreck. Dean shared that opinion. He pulled up to the front steps and got out of the car, staring up at the house with a look he usually reserved for a plate full of broccoli.

"What a piece of shit," he said, shaking his head and adding, "Morons."

Just like he had a million times before, Dean went to the Impala's trunk and came back with a shotgun and a flashlight. There were several steps involved in a ghost hunt. The first was to confirm the existence of the spook. Once that was done we had to figure out who the ghost was, and where the remains were buried. Finally we had to send it packing.

Ghosts have rules. They – we – _haunt. _We're like parasites, latching onto something or someone, unable or unwilling to let go of the life we once had. I never thought I'd be that way, even before I knew what existed out there after we die. Maybe that's why I'm still here. I wasn't real impressed with Heaven, and I sure can't imagine it without Dean. Maybe once upon a time I could, but not now. We've been through too much together.

Lucifer was brought down by vanity. He never thought some puny human would have the strength to take him on and win. He never thought he could make a mistake, but he did. He gave me access to inhuman powers, and tipped me off to a way to pump up the volume with demon blood. That was his first big mistake. His second biggest mistake was at the very end when he decided to torture me and beat the snot out of Dean.

I experienced it all. Lucifer made sure I did. I smelled the stench of blood when he killed Cas. I felt the bullets from Bobby's gun tear up my body, and I felt every bone in Dean's face shatter under my fist as Lucifer worked on beating him to death. I could see Dean's face swelling up into something unrecognizable – a bloody bag of broken bone – and I couldn't stop hitting him. I don't know how he kept himself from passing out. The last blow that landed felt as if I'd punched a blob of Jello.

The pain must have been excruciating, but he never screamed, never let it show. He just kept saying the same thing over and over again - "I'm here, Sammy. I'm not going to leave you." Lucifer broke his jaw, and he still said it. _"I won't leave you."_

If he had, we – humanity - wouldn't be here. Lucifer would have won. Dean being there gave me more strength than any amount of demon blood. I couldn't have taken Lucifer on without him. He's never left me. Not then, not now, maybe not _ever_. It makes me wonder sometimes just who is haunting who.


	2. Chapter 2

Ghosts are territorial. I'm just more mobile because I'm grounded to a person, not a place or a thing. I go where Dean goes. Ghosts also get real pissy when other ghosts invade their territory. I knew there was a spirit in that house the minute we stepped through the door. It wasn't a really bad one, but when she saw me, she wasn't real happy. She sucked all the heat out of the room and used it to manifest at the foot of the stairs.

Dean's mellowed out over the years. He's figured out the truth about ghosts and monsters. Nobody wants to be one, not really. Those that get their kicks out of it – they're the ones that need to be taken out the hard way. The rest just need a little help to get them to where they're supposed to be. He knew this lady spook was just having a hard time letting go of her home. Instead of shooting first, he tried to negotiate. I'm not sure if it would have worked even if I hadn't pissed her off. Although he tries his best, Dean has never been known for his tact.

Before he could even open his mouth she was in my face, her finger jammed up under my nose. She was taller than me, but only because her feet weren't touching the floor. If she thought that was intimidating – it wasn't. For Dean it must have been almost laughable, because he couldn't see who she was yelling at. She just looked more than a little - unbalanced.

"Get out of my house! You don't belong here!"

I pushed her hand out of my face. "Neither do you," I said. "What's your name?"

She ignored me and gave Dean a menacing glare. He raised the shotgun at her.

"You really don't want him to shoot you with that," I warned. "It won't kill you, but it hurts like hell."

"Get out of my house!" she repeated, this time directly to Dean. "GET OUT!"

"It's not your house anymore," Dean said. "You need to give it up, lady. You're dead."

"MY HOUSE!"

She rushed at Dean, who promptly shot her. I heard him curse under his breath, because now that he'd confirmed there actually was a ghost, he was going to have to spend more time away from home. The woman had been wearing turn of the century clothes, which meant she had some age on her. He'd have to pour through a lot of records to find out who she was and where she was buried. Research was never Dean's strong point. That had been my job.

Before he moved on though, he looked around the room, narrowed his eyes, and pulled an EMF detector out of his pocket. He swept it around in front of him as he walked, and muttered to himself

"That chick wasn't the only spook in town," he said quietly. "There's something else here."

Dean swept the EMF in my direction and it let out a squawk. He was standing right in front of me, close enough to touch me if I'd shown myself. Abruptly he turned the EMF meter off and looked right at me. He was quiet for a minute. Then he furrowed his brow and whispered, "Sammy?"

I don't know if I would have answered. I didn't have time to even mull it over. The bitch ghost came back right then and jerked Dean right off his feet by the back of his jacket, throwing him to the floor. He lost his grip on the shotgun and the flashlight. If she hadn't been pissed before, she was now, and she let Dean know about it. Anger gave her a lot of fuel. Before I could do anything she'd drop-kicked my brother across the room where he slammed into the wall hard enough to make the plaster crumble.

"GET OUT!"

Ghosts are territorial. We'd invaded her territory, her haunt, her house. It made her angry, and an angry spirit is a dangerous spirit. Well I was territorial too, and by screwing with Dean, she'd invaded my territory. She'd pissed _me _off.

I'd discovered that for a young ghost, I was pretty strong. Maybe it has something to do with the demon blood, the fact that I was psychic when I was alive, maybe it doesn't, I don't know. It takes a lot of energy to manifest, to become visible to the human eye and even more to actually be able to touch physical objects. A spirit as young as me shouldn't be able to do half the stuff I've been able to do. One thing I learned how to do early on was redirect heat energy.

The girl had Dean by the throat when the roar of fire distracted her. Her head whipped around to where a fire was burning in the fireplace, fueled by a pile of trash that had been thrown there. She looked at the fire, and then at me, and snarled. I nudged the flames higher. The brighter they burned, the more strength I got. The fire raged. Little fingers of flame shot out around the edges, blackening the brick. It wanted out. It wouldn't take much to let it out and burn the whole house to the ground. We both knew it. I reminded her.

"I'll burn it down," I said. "Let him go."

Her grip on Dean's throat tightened. "I'll break his neck."

She made an attempt to draw heat from my fire, but I cut her off. I pulled that energy instead. I sucked it up like I used to do demon blood. Like the demon blood it also gave me a head rush and access to things I normally couldn't access – like the physical world. It wasn't flesh and blood that gave me - or any ghost – a physical form, it was pure energy, energy wrapped around the memory of what was.

That was enough though. I started to feel the heat from the fire, and smell the smoke. The floorboards creaked under my weight. You could hear the sound of my boots as I walked over and picked up the shotgun. There was no doubt Dean saw me. His eyes widened, his mouth fell open. He probably would have let out a gasp if ghost-girl hadn't been crushing his windpipe.

"I said," I repeated, cocking the gun and coaxing the fire even higher, "Let. Him. Go."

She let him go, but not before lifting him off his feet again. Without any effort she hoisted him off the floor with one hand, and with a shriek to wake the dead (no pun intended) she threw him for a second time. I shot her then, the bitch. She'd be back, but I'd bought us some time to get out.

Dean came down hard in the middle of the floor. It knocked the wind out of him and for a second he couldn't do anything but lay there gasping for breath. He struggled to get up. I put the gun down, not sure of what I'd do next. What would hurt him the least? Would it be knowing I was with him always, or just getting a one-time glimpse? Should I talk to him, or go away and pretend this never happened?

I heard him gasp out my name, but I also heard something else. It was the sound of floorboards creaking. More than that, it was the sound of floorboards _breaking_. The spirit had found a rotten place in the floor, a place where the roof had been leaking for ages before the new owners patched it. As Dean stood up the soft, rotted wood crumbled away from what little good board was left, and what was left couldn't support his weight.

"Dean!"

The dead move quickly, or so the old saying goes. I wasn't quick enough. If I'd been human I wouldn't even have come close. I actually think that might have been better. For the first time in a decade I felt the touch of a human hand, my brother's hand. It hurt in a way I can't describe. It was like all the pain and loneliness both of us had felt over the years drove through me like a javelin. In that brief moment I wanted to be alive again so much I couldn't stand it. The longing was agonizing.

But then it was over. I wasn't solid enough. I couldn't hold on to him. His fingers slipped across my palm and he was gone. I could only watch as he disappeared into the dark pit that had opened up in the floor beneath us, falling backward into the bowels of the house.

Ten years earlier he'd watched me fall into darkness and was just as helpless to save me. I could only hope his ultimate fate wasn't the same as mine.

* * *

"This isn't the reunion I'd pictured," Dean whispered. "I don't know why I thought it would be different, that you'd come back - whole. God was fucking _there_, Sam. He brought Cas back. Why...why didn't he save you?"

I'd heard this little tirade from him before. I'd heard it many times over the past ten years. I've repeated it myself a few times. I asked Castiel too.

"He didn't have to save you, " he'd replied. "You, and Dean, you did it yourselves."

"That's a fucked up definition of the word 'saved.' I'm _dead,_ Cas. I'm a ghost stuck haunting my brother. That's not anything like paradise. It's closer to Hell."

"But it's not Hell, is it? It's the soul that matters, Sam. A body is just meat. Uriel once said humans were nothing but plumbing on legs."

"Yeah, and Uriel was an asshole."

I've thought a lot about it since then, and Cas is right. We saved the world, and we saved our souls. I found out even Adam was saved. He's where he belongs, in Heaven, with his Mom and his girl. There's another one God favored over me, but that's okay. I've been the one screwing stuff up. I'm lucky to get what breaks He _has_ given me. Adam didn't deserve what Michael did to him. He should have never gotten wrapped up with us in the first place. Dad tried to protect him too, and almost made it. Almost. If anyone deserved saving, it was him.

"Sammy?"

At the moment Dean needed saving. I was desperately trying to figure out how the hell I was going to do it. We were in the basement. What little reserves I had left I was using to point the house's spirit in the opposite direction. I just couldn't spare anything to make myself visible, or audible, again.

If Dean had fallen on the hard stone floor it probably would have killed him. Instead he'd landed on a pile of broken furniture and some trunks full of moldy clothes or maybe bedding. The soft piles of rotting cloth broke his fall, but he still got hurt pretty bad. A jagged piece of wood from a broken bed frame punched through his right thigh like a spear, pretty much pinning him where he lay. Without help from a living, breathing human – one with a freakin' saw – Dean wasn't going anywhere.

He was bleeding pretty badly, hinting that his femoral artery had been nicked. If it had been severed he would have been dead within minutes. Luckily he kept his head and managed to tie his belt around the top of his leg for a tourniquet. The wound was still bleeding but much more slowly. Still, if he didn't get help soon...

Best case scenario he'd lose his leg. Worst case scenario, he'd die. This is depending on your point of view though, because I think given the choice of losing a leg or dying, Dean would just pull the plug. Hunters, even retired ones, don't make good cripples. Ask Bobby about that.

"Sam?" Dean murmured, his voice plaintive. "Sammy, please...I know you're here. Talk to me!"

I felt the spirit stir upstairs. She was in the attic, and for the moment, content on staying there. If I was going to save Dean I had to do it while she was still preoccupied. I had to get someone to the house to find him. That would be tricky. The "rules" said I couldn't leave my haunt, and my haunt was impaled on a fucking stake in the basement. I couldn't get fifty feet away from him. I'd tried it already. The second I went over "the line" I got zapped back to the basement again. The furthest I'd gotten was out onto the driveway where the Impala was parked.

It crossed my mind to wonder if I couldn't use the car. The Impala was just as much a part of this than anything. Could she be used as an extension of Dean? Could I drive her away from the house? I stood staring at the car, contemplating the answer, but then realized I couldn't leave Dean unprotected. I had to stay with him.

"Dammit!"

I'd wondered why Dean hadn't tried calling anyone. I passed it off as him thinking there wouldn't be a signal down so far out in the boondocks, but as I stood there staring at the Impala, I saw the real reason. There, sitting on the dashboard, was Dean's cell phone. He'd forgotten it. It was still in the car.

I considered my options. I could take the phone to Dean, but I wasn't sure I'd have enough energy to carry it that far, and there was the chance it _wouldn't_ connect. In any case, Dean was barely conscious. He might have been incapable of dialing.

I got in the car and sat down. I realized I'd have to make the call myself. I had to make the _right _one. I had to pick the right number, get hold of the right person, or I'd have Dean's company sooner rather than later. There was another decision I had to make. Was I selfish enough to _let _my brother die? I agonized over the answer. It came quicker than I thought it would.

"No."

Sucking all the juice from the Chevy's battery, I reached for the phone and picked it up. There was a signal. I quickly thumbed through Dean's contacts until I found the number I was looking for. One button. I only had to push one button and I was connected. I got voicemail.

Bingo.

* * *

A car pulled up in the driveway. I heard the tires crunch gravel, and a quiet sigh as her engine stopped. I couldn't let whoever it was go in the main entrance and attract the attention of the ghost upstairs. I had to head them off, get them around to the back of the house and the bulkheads leading into the basement. It meant I had to be seen.

It had been a couple of hours since I used Dean's cell. I had a brief encounter with the spirit. She'd calmed down – a little – and realized if Dean died in her house she might have to share it whether she wanted to or not. I convinced her to back off for a while, but she had a short memory. Like a lot of spirits who spend a lot of time alone, she was more than a little off her rocker. I wasn't convinced she'd keep her word.

Dean was going downhill fast. A half an hour before I heard the car pull up, he started to slip in and out of consciousness. When he was conscious he talked to me. I talked back sometimes, trying to keep him still, reminding him to tend to the tourniquet. It was when he started responding like he could hear me that I got worried. It wasn't anything I did. It was Dean. He was dying. The veil was getting thinner between him and me, and that wasn't good.

"Hang on, Dean. Okay. Just hang on. Someone will be here soon."

"Sam..." He murmured. "I dreamed about angels. Angels." His eyes rolled as he gave a breathy little laugh. "There's no such thing."

"Shit. Dean you're delirious."

"Hmm. Yeah? M'sick, Sammy. 'salright." I watched as his eyes closed, but they weren't closed long before he raised his head with a cry, "SAM! Sammy!"

"Shh. Dean. I'm right here."

"I dreamed...I was dreaming, right?" He laughed a little, breathlessly, like it was silly to even think he wasn't dreaming. "You're not dead." With a sigh, he closed his eyes briefly, obviously relieved at the thought. "You're here."

"I'm here," I said, but didn't confirm or deny the whole "living" part. "I'm not going anywhere."

"I...God it hurts..." Raising a shaking hand, he wiped sweat from his brow and gained a little clarity. "I left the fucking phone in the car...stupid..."

"It's okay. Someone's coming. I called Bobby."

I did call Bobby, and I left a message. He might have been on vacation, but I knew he always checked his messages. I knew he couldn't make it to us in time though. That's not why I called him. I called him because he was the only person I knew who could actually _hear_ me.

"Dean, just hang on okay. I heard a car. Someone's here. I have to go meet them, okay?"

He moaned, flailing with one hand as if trying to get a physical hold on me. "Don't go. Sammy, don't go."

"I'll be right back. I promise."

"'sLucifer, Sammy. Don't go. Don't say yes, Sammy. Don't. Please..." He stopped moving, and if I hadn't heard his breath catch I would have thought he'd died on me. "Sam..."

I left him, hurrying outside to the corner of the house where I could see someone getting out of a pick-up that had pulled in next to the Impala. It was Ben. He paused to peer inside the Chevy, and then stood up to look around. I put everything I had into making myself visible, every bit of energy I could summon. The sun was just beginning to peek over horizon, so I pulled what little warmth it gave to the air around me, and I pulled from all the jumbled up emotions going on in my head. Fear. Pain. Desperation.

Ben froze in place. He frowned, and God help me he shot one eyebrow up just like Dean would have. "Sam?"

He'd only met me once, briefly, so I was a little surprised he recognized me so quickly. He must have seen pictures. I nodded, and made the universal gesture for "follow me." Ben got the point. I heard his footsteps on the gravel driveway fade to muffled thuds as he rounded the corner of the house and pushed his way through the overgrown yard. I reappeared in front of the bulkhead doors, and then walked right through them. Down in the depths of the basement I heard him grunt as he strained against the rusty hinges.

"Dean," I said. "You'll be okay now."

He opened his eyes and looked up at me. Ben had gotten the doors open, and the sun had finally cleared the horizon. Dean saw me only for a second before I disappeared in a burst of light. The dramatic exit was purely coincidental, but I kinda got a kick out of it.

* * *

Over the years I've watched Dean sleep a lot. I've tried a few times to work my way into his dreams like Cas used to do, but I'm no angel and don't have jurisdiction. I can sense them though, Dean's dreams. I know when they're good, and when they turn dark. He still dreams about the Hounds, and Hell, and me. My name comes up a lot. Sometimes he calls out for Dad. He's shouted for help before, pleaded for mercy, cursed, laughed, and cried – all in his sleep. Once, pitifully, I heard him whimper - _"Mommy."_

It's just as well I can't get in. I don't need to haunt Dean's dreams. They're screwed up enough already.

Ben called 911 and they took Dean to the hospital. He'd lost a lot of blood, but he wouldn't lose either his life or his leg. After surgery they took him to a private room to recover and I spent the rest of the day watching him sleep. It was maybe one of the most restful sleeps he'd had in years. Maybe it was the drugs, or maybe it was because he knew now I wasn't suffering a fate he couldn't bear to imagine.

Lucifer and Michael would have made me suffer – a lot – if I'd really been trapped in Lucifer's cage with them. I screwed up their plans and they'd never forgive me for that. Dean was right when he'd said my time in Hell would make his look like a picnic. Demons are vicious. Angels...angels are _creative_.

Lucifer was both.

People say the Devil scares them, and he should. They don't even have the benefit (or curse) of knowing him like I do. There is nothing, _nothing_, more frightening than Lucifer. He's everything that could possibly make a man, or a monster, dangerous. He's smart, seductive, cruel – with the ability to convince himself and everyone else of his own honesty and righteousness. He's the liar of all liars because he believes his own lies. Underneath a veneer of calm he's seething with hurt, anger, and hatred – and laugh at the Star Wars reference if you like, but dark emotions fuel dark power, and his is unfathomable.

More than anything else though, what makes Lucifer so scary and dangerous, is that he's completely sane. He knows exactly what he's doing. He's always thinking five steps ahead of the game. He's the ultimate strategist. There's a reason why he was once God's favorite, and why he _had_ to fall. Lucifer was one step away from being a God himself.

Like H.H. Holmes, I believe Lucifer will be back. He'll eventually figure out another way to get out of his trap. He'll find another Azazel to do his legwork for him out here, and he'll find another human soul to corrupt. Just like Lilith. Just like me.

By the same token, I believe that as long as there are Hunters, there will also be a way of stopping him. Angels may be God's warriors in Heaven, but on Earth, it's Hunters. We might all be messed up in the head, and overindulgent in stuff most people consider sins, but we're the only thing keeping us humans from getting wiped off the planet. We hunt the stuff that's hunting _us. _

Now Bobby Singer might be a drunken fool to the casual observer, but to those in the know, he's a damn good Hunter. He's the best in the business, and probably one of the only ones around to live past the age of sixty. Hell, you were doing good if you made it to forty. Dean had, but barely. I've lost count how many times he'd either died, or come damn close to it, and he'd "retired" at thirty. This close call put another notch in his belt.

Bobby came in around supper time the next day. He'd taken care of the spirit at the house, and gotten the Impala running again, bringing her back to her home in the garage. When he was done, he showed up at the hospital to give Dean a little hell of his own.

"Why didn't you call me?"

"Ben did. You were in Aruba."

Bobby snorted. "I was in Minnesota doing some fishin'. Boy, you're too rusty to go off spook huntin' out of the clear blue sky after spendin' so long playin' Mr. Mom. What were you thinkin'?"

Dean shrugged. "It was just a ghost. I figured it would be a piece of cake."

"If it were anyone else, I'd agree, but I've never known a Winchester case to come up easy. Trouble finds you like flies to a corpse. And speaking of corpses..." Bobby pulled his phone out of his pocket. "You do know I'm the one who sent Ben out there to find you, right?"

"Ben?" Dean frowned. "It was Ben?"

"Yeah, it was Ben. By the time I 'da got there you'd been dead. Lucky for you I check my messages."

Bobby put the phone on speaker, and pushed a button. All you could hear was static – unless you listened real close. There was something underneath, something rhythmical. A trained ear could pick it out immediately, and that's what I'd counted on when I'd called him. Dean heard it too.

"EVP." Dean murmured. He didn't mention me, not then. I don't think he fully trusted his own memories at that point. "That's an EVP."

"EVP." Bobby agreed. In his other pocket he had a small digital recorder. "I downloaded it and did a little tweaking." He pushed play. "Sound familiar?"

I have to give Bobby kudos for his technical skills. He had that EVP cleaned up so there was barely any static. You could hear my voice as clear as day reading off a set of coordinates and concluding with this message:

"_Bobby. Dean's hurt. It's bad. Hurry."_

"I thought I was just out of it," Dean whispered. "Now I'm not so sure." He looked up at Bobby. "It _was_ Sam."

"Yeah, and unless there's a phone booth down in that pit, he ain't in it." Bobby paused. "Wait. What do you mean, it _was _Sam." His eyes widened. "Dean," he said. "You're not talking about the EVP, are you?"

Dean shook his head. "No. I saw him. I talked to him. I thought I was seeing things. Toward the end especially. I'd lost a lot of blood. I wasn't thinkin' real straight, but..." His brows knit as he searched through memories that had gotten a little jumbled. "He was there _before _I fell."

"Sam?"

"Yeah."

"Your_ brother_ Sam?"

"No, my uncle Sam. Yes. Sam. _The_ Sam."

"Impossible..."

"Jesus, Bobby. How can you say that? If the impossible wasn't possible neither of us would freakin' be here."

Bobby shook his head. "But Sam...you said he went in, you saw..."

"I saw what went in, but not what came out. I dunno, Bobby. He musta slipped his meat somehow. Lucifer took it down while Sam's spirit flew the coop."

"You think?"

"How else do you explain it. Bobby he was_ there._ I saw him. I _talked_ to him."

"You're sure?"

"You're the one with the EVP!"

Bobby considered. "He slipped out before the door closed," he said quietly. "Or someone has come along and opened the door."

That was a chilling thought, and it wasn't lost on Dean. "There would have been signs."

"True, and there's been squat. I've been keepin' an eye on it. But still..."

Dean glanced away, wincing as a twinge of pain nailed him. "No. There would have been signs. There would have been seals. Cas would have made sure of it. The seals would have been put back. It would take a hell of a lot to get that door open again."

After a moment, Bobby nodded. "You're right, but there's another way to find out for sure. You might not like it though."

"Summon him?"

"Got a better idea?"

I understood, just like Bobby, that something would bug Dean about this. Back in the day, our job was pretty easy. A lot of it was because of Dad, and the narrow-mindedness of Hunters in general. If it wasn't natural, it was un-natural. If it wasn't human, it was in-human. Throw in a handful of "what the fuck" and you got supernatural. That's what we hunted. There are no shades of gray for most Hunters, and especially for Dad.

I know now what I never knew then – Dad had a clue. He knew damn well the thing that killed mom had come for me. It made him paranoid, and it made him overprotective. Anything beyond the norm was bad, period. That was our drill, our mantra, all the years we were growing up on the road. Dean got it because he remembered the night Mom died and it scared the piss out of him. I didn't get it at all. All I knew was that I was being suffocated by rules I didn't understand. The more Dad tried to keep me in the dark, and therefore _safe_ from the dark, he was actually pushing me _toward _it.

Don't get me wrong, I'm not shoving all my fuck-ups off on Dad. I'm just trying to make a point about how screwed up Dean's head is. When Dad was around, Dean didn't have to analyze all this crap. Dad pointed at something, told Dean it was bad news, and Dean killed it. When Dad died, and left Dean with the instructions to "save Sammy or kill him" my brother's brain blew a fuse. It was a completely alien concept for him to think of me as something we had to Hunt. You don't spend all your life protecting something only to have to turn around and put a bullet in it.

I used to think I was pretty brave. I'd faced down stuff that would make Rambo piss himself. I thought it was pretty brave of me to _admit_ that yeah, there were times when I thought_ I'd_ piss myself. (Don't ever let a Hunter tell you they're not scared. A Hunter who isn't scared by what we do is either lying, or damn stupid.) Truth is, I knew from the very beginning_ I _was something to be scared of, and I never did anything about it. I tried to deny it all my life. I was scared of _myself _so I just pulled the covers over my head and pretended the monster wasn't really there. I was wrong though, dead wrong, and acknowledging that fact was the most frightening thing I've ever had to do.

He'd never admit it, but there was part of Dean that was relieved to see me go, relieved that I took the decision about what to do about the Sam Monster out of his hands. Even if we'd found some other way to stop the Apocalypse, he'd have still had to keep an eye on me 24/7, because nothing could have cured me. I'd been infected by too much evil for too long. Azazel's blood, and the blood I drank later, spread that infection through me like cancer. It had become so much a part of what I was, that carving it out would have killed me.

So when Bobby proposed summoning my spirit, Dean wasn't real sure he wanted to do it. The reason was simple, as simple as Dad's old mantra on the definition of evil. What if they summoned a monster? Would I be evil? Angry? Dangerous? Would they need to put me to rest – for good?

I know all the answers. I think Dean does too. I'm not evil, or angry, or dangerous, but I won't be put to rest easy, and if our fates were reversed, neither would Dean. We're too tied up together. My cancer didn't just infect me. It didn't just fuck up_ my_ life. It spread to everyone around me, and to Dean most of all.

But the need for closure is a pretty powerful thing, and in the end, he agreed to Bobby's suggestion.

* * *

Castiel wonders sometimes if God hasn't gone a little senile. I think that's debatable. God knows what he's doing. _We _don't know what he's doing. It's that whole "mysterious ways" thing that pisses Dean off so bad he can hardly stand himself. He says it's a cop-out. People fling it out there to avoid saying they really don't know what the fuck is really going on. It's the truth though, isn't it? Who are we to presume to know what the fuck God has up his sleeve?

God had something up his sleeve the night Bobby and Dean planned to summon me, that's for sure. He sent a thunderstorm. Talk about off the chart EMF readings. It was almost comical, like something out of an old horror movie – Frankenstein. The air was supercharged with electromagnetic energy, all theirs for the taking, more than enough to channel into one spirit. The storm headed for Indiana that night was big enough to light me up like a Christmas tree. They didn't know it, but they wouldn't have had to summon me with any spell. They'd just have to ask politely. Then it would just be up to me and the lightning.

I still wasn't convinced officially revealing myself would be a good idea, but a summoning spell wouldn't give me any choice. A summoned ghost has to obey the summoner's wishes. It's those damn rules again. A summoning is another way to get rid of a ghost because you could bind it to another location, or to a talisman of some sort, making it portable. More morally bankrupt people (witches and demons mostly) use summoning spells to bind spirits and turn them into weapons. I'm not sure what would happen in a case like mine, when the spirit is tied to a person instead of a place or thing. That might not be transferable.

It had only been a few days since Dean had been discharged from the hospital. He was hobbling around on crutches and popping pain killers like candy. Since it was his right leg that was out of commission, he couldn't drive. That, and the fact Lisa and the kids, Ben in particular, hovered over him like a mother hen, made it hard as hell for him to slip out and meet Bobby. When he finally did make it out of the house, he had to walk a block to the corner where Bobby would pick him up. Of course I went with him. He talked to me the whole way.

"Ben feels guilty," he explained, as if I couldn't see that for myself. "It's not his fault. Sucks that the whole thing backfired on him. The girl's parents were pissed. They think I might sue." He paused both to catch his breath and to think this over. "Should I sue? Maybe I should sue."

"No," I said.

He couldn't hear me, but he responded as if he had.

"It'd pay for Ben's college. Maybe Junior's too."

"You don't have a case, Dean." I still know a thing or two about law. "Since technically speaking you were trespassing."

With a sigh, he resumed his slow progress down the block. It was a nice neighborhood, typical suburbia with manicured lawns, perfectly trimmed hedges, and not a weed in sight. No cracks in the sidewalk either. Dean's progress was slow because he was hurting, not because he had rough terrain to negotiate.

Lisa's house was as well kept as all the others. Before Dean came around she did it herself, or hired a landscaping company to keep it looking neat and tidy. Like everything else he did in his new life of domestication, Dean threw himself whole-heartedly into making sure the yard work was done right. He babied that yard as much as he'd babied the Impala. If the Impala got scratched, Dean immediately got out the touch-up paint. If so much as a single dandelion popped up in his yard, Dean was all over it with the lawn-junkie's equivalent of napalm.

And he called _me_ on having OCD? Right.

It's taken me years, and death, more or less, to figure out me and Dean have – had - a lot more in common than we ever realized. I was always an arrogant prick about that. I can admit it now. It was a lot easier to say Dad and Dean had some fucked-up issues than to admit I was just as bad, and when I did admit to my own shortcomings, it was a hell of a lot easier to blame them for screwing me up in the first place. When he came back from Hell, I decided Dean was shattered, weak, ruined. Truth is, Dean's time in Hell ruined _me_. I just couldn't see it, or didn't want to see it. I can't even blame Ruby for anything I did. She just offered the choices. I made all the decisions. Bad ones.

I know it sounds weird, but Hell made Dean a better person. He never worried before about consequences. Shoot first, ask questions later. After Hell, Dean questioned everything, sometimes to the point of crippling himself. Everything he did, present, past or future, he had to stop and put in perspective. What happens if I do this? Who will it effect? If it all goes to hell, how will I fix it? He went to Hell and the tough guy shell he'd put up around him got cracked wide open.

Before that only a few people knew the real Dean Winchester. He only shared that side of himself with those closest to him, selfish in a way. I knew that Dean, and that's who I'd always tried to be – kind, conscientious, loving and loyal. That's what I used to build _my_ shell. It looked damn pretty on the outside. I was the good cop to Dean's bad cop. Nobody knew we were both overcompensating. Dean protected a soft heart. I hid a monster.

Looking at him when he came back from Hell was like looking in a mirror, but the reflection wasn't true. I saw through my own charade. It all rang false. What I once viewed as strengths, I now saw as weaknesses. I told myself I had to step up, get stronger and tougher because obviously Dean was broken.

But it wasn't him at all. It was me.

* * *

Cicero recently put in a new elementary school. What to do with the old one was still in committee, so until someone came up with a good idea, it was locked up and all but abandoned. Kids sometimes broke in thinking it would be a good place to hole up and conduct some illicit activity – namely booze, drugs and sex. Unfortunately for them, the school board predicted this and made sure the alarms still functioned on the old building. The delinquents were always caught.

This was not the case when it came to a couple of savvy Hunters with a buttload of experience at breaking and entering. It took Bobby about two seconds to shut down the alarm and get the padlock off. They'd picked a door at the back of the gymnasium, one not visible from either the road or the sidewalk. Unless someone actually came up to the door and saw that the padlock was open, they'd never know someone had gotten inside. No lights would tip off the authorities either – the windows in the gym were up high, near the roofline, and the flickering light of about two dozen candles placed on the floor around center court wouldn't reach that far.

Bobby's been through the wringer. He's been beat up and beat down, but for all that and the age he's got on him, he's still going strong. He likes to joke that all the alcohol he's consumed over the years has preserved him. My own theory is that he's just too valuable to the Hunting community for God to retire him from the playing field just yet. Dean and I weren't the only ones who relied on his library of knowledge. It wasn't just the books, because they'd be useless if you didn't know how to work Bobby's cataloging system. That, and a lot of stuff you couldn't find in any book, Bobby kept in his head.

The summoning spell they were using on me was so basic Bobby didn't even need a book. He just knew it.

There are really two types of Hunters. There are ones like Dean who ride out with guns and knives, salt and iron, and then there are guys like Bobby who fight the supernatural _with_ the supernatural. I'm talking about spells and cantrips, sigils and herbs. I'm talking about witchcraft. Thing is, if you actually define it as witchcraft, these guys are likely to pull out a gun and blow your head off. You'd never dare suggest to a priest performing an exorcism that the _Rituale Romanum_ is in effect, a spell. Same thing goes with a Hunter. The stuff they use are tools, not spells. A more generous Hunter might (and that's a big _might_) go as far to say it is white magic versus black magic.

It all boils down to the same thing in the end. What makes the difference is intent and result – and a large helping of point of view.

I knew a lot about magic. Bobby taught me more, and although he's never talked about what caused the falling out between him and Dad, I suspect it this might have been part of it. Dad was never big on ritual. He was definitely the point and shoot kind of Hunter. I think he knew early on that I'd be the other kind. Even if he didn't have all the gory details, Dad knew there was something different about me from day one. Dabbling in magic wasn't something he wanted me to do. Once I started really getting into it, asking Bobby questions and stuff, that was the end. I was thirteen when Dad stopped taking me to Bobby's. If he went, he went by himself or with Dean - until the day Bobby chased him off with a shotgun. I wouldn't see "Uncle Bobby" in person again for nine long years.

Between what I learned myself, what Bobby showed me, and then later, what Ruby taught me, it wouldn't have been wrong to call me a warlock. The jury is still out on whether or not I'd blow your head off for the insult, or if Dean would beat me to it.

While I stood in ghostly limbo at center court, admiring how disgustingly precise Bobby's pentagram was drawn, Dean sat on the bleachers sweating like a pig and trying not to take a nosedive. It was the pain making him sweat. The pain medication was just making him sleepy. Referring to Dean's Hunting skills as being "rusty" wasn't far off the mark. Even without drugs in his system, Dean had a hard time staying up past ten o'clock anymore. His domestication was that thorough. He got up at dawn. Yeah, I know. My brother the early riser. It's a completely alien concept.

"Are you sure you're up for this?" Bobby asked. "You look a little peaked."

"What?" Dean sat up a little straighter and groped for his crutches. "Yes. I'm fine." He waved a hand before hauling himself up to his feet and making his way over to where Bobby stood at the edge of the pentagram. "Just go."

"I'm not just talkin' about the physical either." As Dean got closer, Bobby lowered his voice. "Are you emotionally up to this?"

Dean gave him a wry grin. "Afraid there may be crying?"

"Oh, I know there's gonna be crying, 'cause my eyes won't be dry, that's for damn sure."

Good old Bobby, always brutally honest.

"No matter what happens, " he continued. "Whether Sam shows up or he doesn't, it's gonna hurt like hell, Dean."

"Only Hell can hurt like hell," Dean ran an arm over his forehead, wiping away the sweat beading up there after his short walk from the bleachers. "It's a very – unique – kind of pain. Pain of the soul. The worst kind." He gave his leg a careful little pat. "This, physical pain, it's nothing. Bottom rung stuff. And yeah, heartache, the middle ground, that can suck. Cuts a little deeper, sure, but I can deal with it. I've been dealing with it for a long, long time." His voice held more than a hint of pain when he concluded, "We're old friends."

"You've gotten philosophical in your old age." Bobby teased.

With a soft snort, Dean shook his head. "No I haven't. That..." he said. "Was a lesson from Alistair, part of a favorite lecture on the art of inflicting pain. You know how they say those that can, do, and those that can't, teach?"

"Yeah."

"Alistair was good at both." Dean's gaze grew a little vague. "He had ways to make sure you remembered what he said." He shrugged. "He also had plenty of time to say things more than once – just to make real sure it sunk in."

Ruby told me about Hell once. She _claimed _she didn't _want_ to tell me, that it would just upset me, knowing Dean was there, but since I'd _insisted_...

Did she get off on telling me what it was like, what Dean could have been going through? Honestly, I don't know. Looking back at it, there are times when I think she did care about me in some sort of twisted Florence Nightingale way. I was her project, but I think I grew on her in ways she didn't expect. Maybe that's just me trying to foist human emotions off on an inhuman being, trying to rationalize the relationship – again. I dunno. I still think there was something there. Something.

Would she still have handed me over to Lucifer without a second thought? Probably.

In Hell souls are tortured in a massive open space like the killing room floor of a slaughterhouse stretching on for miles. There are no walls, no doors and no privacy. You watch others being tortured and they watch you – which only adds to the overall sense of terror. It's a room filthy with flesh and blood and bone, layer upon rotting layer. It's hot, humid and dark. The screaming never stops. The stench is unbearable.

"You get used to it," Ruby said. "You learn to focus, tune it out. As for the smell - watch him next time you two come across a nice ripe corpse."

I made a note of it, and it wasn't long afterward that we did have to deal with some really ripe corpses. You run into some pretty nasty stinks in this business, and rotting meat is the worst. Never fails to trigger the gag reflex no matter how many times you experience it. After he came back from Hell the smell of decomposing flesh didn't even make Dean flinch. If Ruby hadn't told me what she did I would have thought he'd lost his sense of smell.

"Alistair," Dean murmured. "Liked to attach lessons to tortures. It was all about the timing, he said. If it took three hours to dislocate every joint in your body, he'd do it while lecturing on some philosophy of pain that would take exactly three hours from start to finish. Whatever he was saying at the moment he popped a bone out of its socket tended to stick with you, like the pain seared it into your memory or something." He winced slightly. "His lecture on the three main types of pain took a while. About the same amount of time it took for him to pull your guts out through your nose."

Bobby – no kidding – turned white. "Jesus, Dean..."

With a deep intake of breath, as if he were shaking off a bad dream, Dean finished in a tone that made him sound like he was talking about something totally mundane – like changing a tire. "Took a lot of skill to pull that one off and it hurt like a mother fucker. Only Alistair knew how, until he taught me." The tone was nonchalant, the expression wasn't. Whether it was because he recalled his own pain, or the pain he inflicted on someone else, or both, didn't matter. It was the memory that hurt him now. "Can we get on with this?"

In all the years since he went to Hell, this was probably the most he'd ever given up about the things that went on there, especially things that he did or were done to him. It caught both me and Bobby by surprise. I think it startled Dean too. He's always been reluctant to talk about Hell. He's said pretty much nothing about it to me or anyone else.

The only other source of information about Dean's time in Hell was Castiel. After all, he'd been the one to pull Dean out. I asked him about it once. I said, "Was it bad?"

"Unimaginably so," Cas said quietly. "Alistair was a particularly cruel demon. Brutal and very...imaginative."

"Could you have made him forget?"

"Yes."

"Why didn't you?"

Castiel looked at me as if I were a moron. The answer, to him, was obvious. "Because I was not told to do so."

At the time of this conversation we were standing in Lisa's back yard watching Dean chase a squealing Junior around with a garden hose,_ both_ of them giggling like little kids, and Dean nearly forty. "Could you do it now?" I asked.

"No," Cas said. "Too much time has passed. The memories are intrinsic with who he's become. If I were to remove them he'd be irreparably damaged."

I didn't bother to point out the fact that Dean was already irreparably damaged. I realized, though, seeing him get so much joy from the simple act of playing with his kid, that my brother might finally starting to heal. That's what I'd wanted. That's what his promise to me was all about.

Now he and Bobby were about to fuck it up.


	3. Chapter 3

Here's a secret for you – Dean was afraid of storms when he was a kid.

You'd think, being younger, that it would have been me, but it wasn't. Thunder and lightning didn't bother me at all. I don't know why. Maybe it was because I naively thought Dean could protect me from the storms like he protected me from everything else. I wasn't afraid of storms when Dad was there, and I wasn't afraid of storms when he wasn't. Considering we spent a lot of time driving back and forth through tornado alley, that attitude might have been a little stupid on my part. You grow up in the Midwest and you usually gain a healthy respect for Mother Nature. I never bothered.

Dean did though. Storms made him nervous until he was old enough to drive. I guess a driver's license and access to a vehicle gave him more confidence. If a storm threatened he'd just get in the car and go somewhere else. As a kid though, with no way to escape, Dean freaked out when it stormed. I remember once, when I was five, the tornado sirens going off while Dad was away on a Hunt and me and Dean alone in an Oklahoma motel. The manager came and hustled us all down into a storm cellar built under the lobby building.

A family of three – mom, dad and a little girl – sat next to us in a corner under the stairs. The little girl was holding on to a teddy bear so tightly her knuckles were white. Dean was holding on to _me _so tight he left bruises on my arms.

I eventually found out that this was because a tornado went through Lawrence when my brother was three and I wasn't even a thought in my parents' heads. The tornado side-swiped our house, pulling off a piece of the roof. Dad wasn't there for that either. He'd been at work and couldn't get home in time. Mom took Dean down into the basement and they were perfectly safe, but it scared the piss out of Dean anyway. When Dad told me this story I asked him if Mom was scared too.

"Your mother wasn't afraid of anything," he'd said.

She certainly wasn't afraid of weather. There were other, scarier things out there to be afraid of, but she knew how to kill them so they didn't bother her either, and like Dean at sixteen, Mom knew the way to handle bad weather was to just get the hell out of it.

Anyway, it could have been an omen, that tornado. The section of roof it ripped off was directly over the room that would eventually be mine.

It was storming like gang-busters the night Bobby and Dean summoned me. You could hear the drum of a heavy downpour on the gymnasium roof. The crash of thunder reverberated through the wooden floor. The air was thick with humidity, and electromagnetic energy. I don't know if Bobby and Dean could feel it, but I could. Once an addict, always an addict. Smokers quit smoking and start eating. I shake the demon blood addiction and trade it for death and a different kind of craving.

Bobby recited the summoning while Dean, struggling with his crutches, performed the ritual. With each step, each word, energy began to build up within the room. From there it flowed like liquid toward each point of the pentacle drawn on the floor. Unless they were psychic, a human couldn't see it, but I could. There's no accurate description, no color to define it with, but I could see it gathering inside the circle. It baited me. I knew if I stepped into the circle I'd be trapped. I also knew I wanted – needed – that energy badly. I couldn't resist promised warmth - and I was so very, very cold.

I resisted though. I held on because old habits die hard, and I had just enough stubbornness left in me to want to do things on _my_ terms. I was also scared. For ten years Dean and I had death standing between us. I'd watched him move on with his life without interference. The wall of death protected both of us and it was about to be torn down. We'd be face to face for the first time in ten years, truly interacting with each other, without anything to hide behind. Death preserved the good, and edited out the bad and the ugly. Real life was never that easy.

This wasn't going to be like it was when Dean came back from Hell. I was still going to be dead, he was alive, and both of us had changed. It would be game time, time to come face to face with some crappy realities and make some tough decisions. This was the day I'd always dreaded, and at the same time longed for with all my heart.

Bobby was right. No matter what happened – it was going to hurt.

The more I resisted, the more power the spell drew from the storm. Outside the wind picked up, and the lighting became more and more intense. Once a bolt hit the building itself, and sent blue sparks crackling all along the steel girders supporting the roof above our heads. The noise was deafening. At the center of the pentagram, a brilliant light began to appear. A wind began to pick up inside the room. The candles flickered. It tugged at Dean and Bobby's shirts.

"Bobby?" Dean shouted. "What's going on?"

"Nothing good!" Bobby yelled back.

"Lucifer?"

"I don't think so. We've got something hooked, but it's not wanting to cooperate!"

Bobby began to recite the words of the spell again,_ commanding_ me to appear, and this time I _felt _it. It hurt, like a giant hand had reached inside me and grabbed a hold of my heart. It squeezed me tight and began_ pulling_ me toward the center of the pentagram. The light grew brighter. It hurt my eyes. I could feel my skin tingle with a million tiny electric shocks. I felt this. I _physically f_elt it from the soles of my shoes to the ends of my hair. My spirit was being dragged out of limbo and dressed up in substance. I was going to show up to the party whether I wanted to or not.

"No. Bobby. Stop." I dug in my heels. I stopped at the edge of the first circle, refusing to go any further. I wasn't ready for this. _Dean _wasn't ready for this. "Stop!"

Thunder boomed overhead. I let out a yell when I was suddenly yanked off my feet and dumped into the center of the light. The yell turned into a scream when all that built up energy slammed into me all at once. I was on my knees, my arms outstretched, my spine arched back so painfully I thought it was going to snap, body or no body. My voice echoed through the empty gymnasium and overrode the storm.

"Noooooo!"

* * *

I walked into a liquor store at 1 a.m. May 2, 2008 and bought two bottles of whiskey. I had to wait for the clerk, so I stood there looking at myself in the mirror behind the counter.

I was twenty-five years old.

There was blood on my shirt and a body in my car.

Happy fucking birthday to me.

The clerk came out of the back room. He didn't even give me a second glance, as if men with blood-stained shirts came in every night to buy whiskey. There was blood on the cash I gave him too. It was still wet and sticky. That caused him to wrinkle a lip in disgust, but he handed me my change and bagged my booze without a word. I wasn't paying attention anyway. I was hoping I hadn't gotten blood on the Impala's carpet. It would leave a stain.

_Dean will kill me._

_Dean's dead. _

"It's my birthday," I said, as if that explained everything.

The clerk didn't give a shit. He just wanted me out before the cops came. "Well, happy birthday, kid."

I knew what he was really thinking.

_Get out, you freak._

Three hours later Bobby and I were in Pontiac, Illinois. We dug a hole and I buried the shredded remains of my brother. I was drunk out of my mind by then. I never told Dean, but I threw up at the foot of his grave before we left. I don't know why I never told him. He would have laughed his ass off.

Bloodstains won't come out of hardwood floors. It has to be sanded out. The house in New Harmony had beautiful hardwood floors – before Dean bled all over them.

"They weren't shiny," I murmured. I was kneeling on a hardwood floor, a hardwood floor made shiny with layers and layers of clear varnish put down over many years. I ran a hand over the smooth surface. Wood retained warmth better than anything else, but not like this. This was warm, too warm, like it was alive, like the tree was somehow still alive. "But it's not," I said. "Not alive. Not really."

It wasn't that the wood was warm, it was that I was cold. Cold. And dead.

"Sam?"

Bobby. Bobby's voice. Hardwood floor – gym floor. Okay. Stuff was coming back into alignment. Memory anyway. My insides – not so much.

"I think I'm gonna puke," I said hoarsely.

"I doubt that, ya idjit. You've got no stomach to throw up with."

I sat up slowly. I felt like I had a hangover. My head was throbbing, I was dizzier than hell, and for all that Bobby said I couldn't throw up, I sure felt like I was going to.

"Yeah? Are you going to say that when I hurl ectoplasmic glop all over your shoes?"

Bobby looked at Dean. "Lucifer didn't have that much of a sense of humor. Did he?"

"Lucifer had a _sick_ sense of humor," I answered, working my way back onto my feet. "It's me, Bobby. Don't worry." I glanced over at Dean and my sense of humor vanished. I could barely get out the words, "Hey, Dean."

We met mid-court. I didn't move. Neither of us said anything at first. We were within arm's length of each other when Dean reached out and ran his fingers across my chest. His hand flattened out. He placed his palm over my heart and curled his fingers into the front of my shirt until he had a handful of it clenched in his fist.

Solid. Real.

For now.

"Sam," he croaked. "You're here."

It should have been more emotional for Dean than me, after all, I'd been with him every single day for the past ten years. I think we ended up about even on the emotionally gob-smacked scale, but I was the one that started the waterworks. I couldn't help it. Being there, being _there_, finally, after ten years of watching and waiting for something, _anything_, to happen...it got to me.

"I never left," I whispered. "Dean. I never left."

* * *

"_Sammy, why didn't you let me know you were here?"_

"_You know why."_

"_So you just let me go on thinking you were in the pit with Lucifer?"_

"_Did you really think I was?"_

"No," Dean said softly. "Sometimes...yes. But there were times when..." His voice broke, and it was his turn. Tag team tears. "I'm no psychic," he said gruffly.

"You don't have to be."

We were outside. The storms had passed and the night cleared. Just like old times we leaned against the car and talked. The only thing missing was the Impala. We were at Bobby's car instead – Dean sitting on the hood, taking the weight off his bad leg, me leaning against the fender. It looked like I was going to stick around for a while. I was pretty charged-up this time, and more or less against my will.

"No, I guess not." Dean took a deep breath. "I felt you. It was like if I looked up, you'd be there, pissed at me for ignoring you." He paused. "I kept my promise, Sammy."

"I know. Thanks for that."

"Was it boring?"

"What? Watching you play at Dad of the Year?" I laughed. "Not for a minute."

He scowled. "I'm glad my hard work provided you with so much entertainment."

"I got a kick out of you changing Junior's diapers."

"Dude. I used to change _your _diapers."

Abruptly, there was an awkward silence. I know it sounds really stupid, but I couldn't think of anything to say. Dean turned his head to hide his face from me, but as solid as I was right then, I could feel his shoulder next to mine, and I could feel it shake.

In a barely audible whisper he said, "Sammy..." And then, "I wanted to die."

"I know."

"No. You don't. You..._defined_ me, Sam. Everything. Everything in my life revolved around you, and it always had." I glanced over my shoulder and saw his face. The look was agonized. His teeth were clenched. "Don't tell me you know, because you don't. I've been looking after you since I was four years old. I sold my _soul_ for you. I went to _Hell _for you. But... you changed..._I _changed, and then you were gone and...I had no idea who I was anymore." He took a shuddering breath, and shook his head sadly. "You can't understand, Sammy. You just...can't."

But I did. I had.

"And now?" I asked softly. "Who are you?"

He laughed a little. "Not Dad of the Year."

"No. But you're still a damn good dad. Are you sorry for that, Dean? I mean, it must be worth something because you didn't trade it for my ass this time."

"I promised you I wouldn't."

"And of all the things I could have made you promise, why the hell do you think I picked that one, huh?" I looked up at the stars. "Give me some credit, will you?" I said. "Do you honestly think I don't understand the meaning of loss? That I haven't hurt? Look who you're talking to, Dean. I would have traded my soul in a million times over to fix what got broken because of me, but I was never _allowed." _I turned around so I could face him_. "_Can't you let me have this one?"

"What do you want me to say, Sam?" Dean shot back. "Huh? What?"

"Christ, Dean. Just tell me you're happy for once in your life!"

He stared at me, tears in his eyes and his mouth open. For a long time he didn't say anything at all, but then he shook his head and whispered. "I can't."

"No," I said. "You can't because you've chained yourself to a corpse." I pleaded. "Let it go, Dean. Please, just let _me_ go. I'm what's making you miserable."

It didn't surprise either of us that the last thing he said to me before he picked up his crutches and went home were the same two words.

"I can't."

* * *

Some people equate evil with chaos, but that's not necessarily true. Demons like to cause chaos, and in that way, they themselves become predictable. Like ghosts, demons tend to follow "the rules." Among a lot of other things that's what made Ruby so attractive. She was a demon who didn't follow the rules. I thought she was there to help me. Sometimes, I thought she loved me. I've heard it, and I've said it myself a million times - I should have known better.

It had started pouring rain again when we finally left the gym. Dean wasn't in much of a talking mood by then, physically and emotionally wrung out. Bobby dropped him off at the end of the block and he carefully made his way up to the house, soaked through and hurting bad by the time he got there. He knew now I was there with him, and I was still fully charged. The spell had pumped me full of electromagnetic meth. I could manifest as solid to the touch as I would have been wearing flesh – if I chose. At that time I chose to keep a low profile.

Dean and I were used to putting each other before ourselves, too afraid to go it alone. I never knew that about myself until I lost him, and I'd done what I'd once accused him of doing after Dad died. That Hellhound ripped out my heart just as it had Dean's – only I had to keep on living with the hole it left, that gaping wound in my chest. I would have done anything to make it stop hurting – and I did. I tried to fill it with Ruby, and revenge. I reached for things I knew I shouldn't have touched. I did exactly what the demons knew I would if they took Dean away from me.

I made Dean break our vicious cycle with a single promise, but I was beginning to realize that it hadn't changed anything. Dean throwing in the towel on Hunting threw the demons off. He became unpredictable, vanishing off their radar because he didn't do what they expected him to do. Going to Lisa kept him safe, and at the same time it eased the pain – but not enough, not nearly enough. You can't patch up a wound like that with a band aid. The life he had with Lisa came too late. It was the life he had always wanted, but he was too far gone to enjoy it. The wound would never heal completely.

Now he had a choice to make. He knew I wasn't suffering. He knew if I moved on, I'd be at peace. It wasn't me that kept him holding on, not really. It was the fact that if he let go, acknowledged that he wouldn't have to keep his promise to me, he'd have no excuse to stay. He'd have to admit the truth – that he _wasn't _domesticated, that the role of house husband he'd been playing for the past ten years was killing him.

He'd have to start Hunting again.

It boiled down to him having to chose between me and Lisa, his dead brother and his living children. That wasn't an enviable position for anyone. He himself would be miserable with either choice. He was tired of Hunting, but it was all he knew, and all he'd have left if he abandoned his TVLand life. It's hard, knowing you have a calling and hating it. You can't ignore it. It's like committing murder. How many lives could you have saved while you were in that PTA meeting, or hanging out with the kids at some family theme park?

In retrospect, me forcing him to take what he'd always wanted, hurt Dean more than it saved him. After we dispatched Lucifer, and he thought I'd trapped in oblivion, Dean came to the end of the road himself. Famine had hit the mark – my brother was dead inside. He'd finally arrived at the point where everything had gone numb. There was no more grief, no more guilt, no more pain. He had nothing left to love, so what did it matter what he did next? So he fulfilled his promise, never knowing it would make him feel again. But what he felt, more than anything else, was just more pain.

I should have known better.

What's dead, should stay dead.

* * *

The lights were on in the house. Dean sighed as he saw them. Lisa was up, and no doubt noticed Dean's absence. He was already drained. Now there would be a confrontation with Lisa he just wasn't up to having.

"Dammit," he murmured, and opened the door. "Lise..."

It hit us both at the same time. I felt it as a major disruption in the energies inside the house, a supernatural alarm bell ringing loud enough to make all my senses shoot into hyperdrive. It was the smell that got Dean. Pungent, reeking, like a barrel full of rotten eggs spoiling in the summer sun - the unmistakable stink of sulfur.

"No. Oh, God. No..."

I stepped out of limbo and grabbed his arm. "Dean, wait..."

He shook me off, swinging his crutches forward and back and plunging head-long over the threshold. "Lisa? LISA!"

She was standing in the living room, wearing just a pair of boxer shorts and a t-shirt, what she normally wore to bed. Her bare legs were spattered with blood. Her chest was covered in it. A thin red line stretched across her throat from one ear to the other – the source of the literal waterfall of blood.

Dean stopped in his tracks, gasping for breath. Lisa smiled at him.

"Hello Dean, and...oh my God! Is that our little _Sammy_?" She laughed. "Well, this_ has_ been a night of surprises." Waving one bloodstained hand, she came closer. The smell of iron and sulfur increased. "I came to this po-dunk town expecting to find some silly girl playing at witchcraft. Imagine my surprise to discover the long lost Dean Winchester, and now look! It's Sam too. I couldn't be happier." She made a mock pout and her eyes went completely black. "Things just haven't been the same without you boys."

With an odd, strangled sound that was half growl, half scream, Dean launched himself at her, swinging one of his crutches hard toward her head. She blocked the blow with ease, wrenching his makeshift weapon out of his grasp with one hand and punching him with the other. He crashed into a bookcase, going down hard under a barrage of broken glass. With a gleeful laugh she dropped the crutch and threw up her right hand. Dean was jerked up off the floor and hurled across the room again – this time toward the stone fireplace.

The landing might have killed him if I hadn't interrupted his trajectory. I threw up a hand and "caught" him. Instead of hitting the hearth, his flight fell short, onto the sofa. His body bounced off the cushions and landed on the living room rug with a pretty loud thud but no serious damage. The demon whirled back around to face me. Her eyes narrowed. We began to circle one another.

"That spell," she hissed. "The one I followed here. He summoned you." Her brow knit. "But you...could that mean Lucifer is free as well?"

"No," I said. "Big Daddy is still locked up nice and tight. So sorry to disappoint you." With a snarl, I made the reveal. I could see the face behind the meat. I could smell the stink of her black, rotten soul. "Meg."

"Oh, just call me Lisa." Meg chuckled. "You know, I should have known she was Dean's bitch. Long legs, big tits...just his type. She fought me. I might have let her live if she had just cooperated. Too bad."

The "too bad" was directed at Dean, who had pulled himself back up onto his feet. With gritted teeth he limped over to where I stood. His face was pale and sweat beaded up across his forehead. Pain radiated off of him like waves, and it wasn't just physical pain. Emotionally he was in agony. It was just the kind of stuff a demon gets off on but there was no way he could hold it back.

"You'll pay for this," he growled. "I swear to God..."

"God," Meg rolled her eyes and snorted. "Who didn't even bother to come to the Apocalypse party we threw him? Dean," she added in a patronizing stage whisper. "I don't think he's listening."

"What do you want?" I demanded. "It's over for us. We're out of it. Go play somewhere else – preferably in Hell."

"What do I want? Hmm?" She turned her gaze upward and tapped her chin in an exaggerated gesture, finally shrugging. "What everyone wants I guess. Love, marriage, a home, and..."

Her best demonic grin, on Lisa's face, was unnerving. I could have predicted what would come next.

"Children."

As if on cue, a scream echoed down the stairs. It was a child's scream, followed immediately by another, only this one contained a word.

"DAAAADEEEEE!"

Meg thrust out a hand, prempting Dean's rush for the stairs. He flew back into the wall and was pinned there. "Oh, no you don't," she said pleasantly. Glancing over her shoulder, we could all see a second demon descending the stairs with a small, limp body lying in his arms.

"No." Dean's voice cracked_. _He didn't bother to hide the tears, and he didn't hesitate to beg. She had his son, the only family he had left, and if Dean values anything, it's family. "Please. Meg, please...I'll do anything. I swear, I'll give you anything you want. My life, my soul. Just don't hurt him. Please."

She slowly made her way toward him, her smile mocking. "Sorry. I'm not bargaining. Not with you. Not with that," she pointed at Junior. "But I'm not going to hurt him, not a hair on his little head, because you know what I see there? I see another chance. I see redemption." Her accomplice arrived at her side, still carrying Dean's son. Meg reached over and pulled a knife from his belt. I recognized it. I knew that knife real well. It had once been Ruby's.

"He's a little old, but he'll do. It's all in the breeding – and the blood." Her lip curled as she held out her arm and ran the knife across her wrist. Despite what Lisa's body had already spilled, blood flowed quickly from the cut. But then, this wasn't Lisa's human blood. It was the demon's.

I hadn't moved from where I stood. I suspect Meg thought maybe I couldn't, or wouldn't, but she was wrong on both counts. As soon as I understood what she had planned, my paralysis broke. I struck her fast and I struck her hard, wrenching the knife from her hand and thrusting her up against the wall opposite where Dean still stood trapped. Her minion started to come to her defense, dropping Junior into an armchair. I gave a quick flip of my wrist and the knife flew from my hand, burying itself in the demon's chest. He gave a gurgling scream and died where he stood.

Meg didn't move. We stood nose to nose, my arm shoved up under her chin and across her throat, just like the wound she wore, the wound that killed the love of Dean's life and the mother of his children. I felt sick. It was happening again - the same curse coming back to haunt us again. Another family torn apart.

Without warning, Meg raised her arm like she was going to belt me one. I quickly grabbed her wrist and held it with my free hand. I could feel her struggling against me both physically and psychically.

"You," she croaked. "Might have the power of the dead behind you, Sam. But I have Hell in my corner. You've felt that power. You know who's going to win this." Her eyes flashed black. "I'm going to suck you dry, Casper, and once you're out of my way, I'm going to take your brother apart piece by piece by piece." She laughed despite the pressure of my arm on her throat. "And you know what I'm going to do then? I'm going to claim the boy as Hell's own. Castiel and his feathered buddies can put up all the seals they want, but I'll bust 'em all, and in the end, Dean's little whelp will throw open the final door. Lucifer will rise again, Sammy, and there's nothing you can do to stop it this time."

She was true to her word. Almost immediately I could feel myself weakening as she began to siphon off my energy. I was a spirit, a human spirit. I was no match for a demon, especially one as old and savvy as Meg. She had my number too, some psychic tie left over from when she'd possessed me, giving her an advantage another demon might not have. She'd bleed me back into limbo and I would be unable to stop her.

The summoning had given me the ability to have form and substance. It had also given me back my human senses. When Meg attempted to hit me, when I grabbed her arm, blood spattered across my face from the cut she'd made at her wrist. Now it ran freely over my hand and fell in thick, sluggish drops to the floor. The smell of it woke up memories I thought were long gone. When I licked my lips the taste of it hit me like a freight train. I didn't just want it. I _needed _it.

I didn't know what it meant. I was dead. My body was dust. I shouldn't have felt what I did.

But I did, and I knew what I had to do next regardless of the cost. I wasn't about to let her turn my nephew into a monster like me.

"Think again, bitch," I growled, and pulled her arm up to my mouth.

* * *

Castiel told me what would have happened if I'd done it – if, as a ghost, I'd consumed demon blood. The theory was that it would have turned me right then and there. My human spirit would have been destroyed, warped into the black, sulfurous smoke we know as demons when they're not possessing a body. I say it's only theory because it had never been proven. It had never happened before. Cas seemed pretty convinced though, and that was enough for me to be glad I failed.

What stopped me?

Dean.

Of course. What else?

Once a Hunter, always a Hunter. If Meg had stepped back just a few feet further into the living room, she would have been caught by the Devil's trap Dean had painted on the floor beneath the rug. In the dining room liquor cabinet there was a vodka bottle full of holy water and a wooden box full of "goofer dust." In the umbrella stand beside the front door was a length of solid iron rod, and a sawed-off shotgun loaded with rock salt.

Meg poured everything she had into the battle with me. Her attention was focused on keeping me off her, because like Cas, she wasn't real sure what would happen if I got a good taste of her blood. She didn't notice Junior had stirred from the chair. Her hold on Dean was loosening. He'd gotten his feet back on the floor, and when his son rushed into his arms with a cry, Meg didn't notice. She didn't see Dean send Junior away on a mission of his own.

"SAM!"

I turned, and though it seemed like a lifetime, what happened next took only seconds.

Dean stood there behind me. In his left hand he held the shotgun he'd had John Robert retrieve from the umbrella stand. In his right hand was Ruby's bloody knife. The knife was for Meg, the shotgun was for me.

We stood on the brink. It was Stull Cemetery all over again. I could feel the rush of wind pulling me down as the vortex opened up under my feet, I could feel Lucifer clawing at my mind, fighting to regain control, and I could see the painful resignation in my brother's eyes. There was no other way to end the Apocalypse. There was no other way to save ourselves. He had to go his way, and me, mine, even if that meant spending an eternity in Hell.

It wasn't God who saved me that day. It had been Dean. He'd made a vow, a promise, and by keeping it, he made sure that every single day he spent with Lisa, he would think of me. That promise had been my lifeline. It freed me, and yet it bound me too. Now the power it had over me was wearing thin.

Dean couldn't live the life I asked him to live. For ten years he'd flown under the demons' radar, but it wouldn't have lasted forever. It would have always ended like this. They would have always found him, no matter how fast or how far he ran. Now he had no choice. Meg had forced his hand. He had to let go of the normal life we'd both wanted.

We stood on the brink of death, both of us.

_I'm sorry, Sammy. _

_I know. It's okay, Dean. It's okay._

His finger closed around the trigger, and he filled my chest with rock salt.

There is nothing in life or death that causes that much pain. Every particle of my being was being torn apart, the definition of disintegration, and even though it looks instantaneous, it doesn't feel instantaneous. It feels like it's being done in slow motion, like being _eroded _away into nothing. I lost my grip on Meg. I lost my grip on reality. All the energy Bobby and Dean had given me with the summoning took off like air from a popped balloon. There was nothing left for me to clothe myself in, nothing to give me the strength to manifest among the living. I was dead again. Thoroughly, totally, dead.

If I hadn't been distracted by the pain I would have noticed Ruby's dagger fly past just as I vanished. I would have heard Meg's scream of agony if my own hadn't been filling my head. Dean's throw struck her right through the heart. Ruby's dagger killed Meg instantly, along with anything that might have remained of Lisa. The last thing I remember of that moment was catching a glimpse of Lisa's body falling to the floor, and hearing the heartbroken wail of a child who would never be the same again.

* * *

Life revolves in circles, and I'm not quoting Disney here. Fads come back, trends reappear decades later, people follow well worn paths generation after generation. A long time ago Dean scoffed at me when I claimed our family was cursed. After we learned more about our past, he changed his tune.

The night my mother died, something broke in Dad. He would never be the same again. Mom's deal to save us all from the life she'd known as a kid, ended up thrusting us right back into it. All she'd ever wanted was to lead a normal life. I tried to give that to Dean, and like Mom, I failed in an awful way. Because of me, Lisa was dead. Because of me, Dean would start Hunting again, and he would take John Robert with him, who will, no doubt, represent the next generation of Campbell/Winchester Hunters. Our curse continues.

After Dean shot me I couldn't go back. I was no longer Earthbound, Dean was no longer haunted. The ties between us had finally been severed. When I reappeared with both feet firmly planted on the spirit side of the veil, Tessa was there waiting for me. Dean had made his choice – had been _forced_ to make his choice. Now it was my turn.

"Dean..." I said, still frantic, not sure about what I'd seen. Was Meg really dead? Were Dean and Junior okay? "Tessa, I can't..."

"You can," she said firmly. "And you will."

"He needs me!"

"Yes, he does." Reaching out her hand, Tessa gently touched my face. I immediately felt a sense of peace wash over me. She was never anything but sympathetic. It was her job – Guidance Counselor to the dead. "But not here. Not now."

"Tessa..."

"Let go, Sam." Her voice softened. "Let him be who he was meant to be."

"God's whipping boy?" I demanded angrily.

"Your big brother."

I looked away from her. I understood what she was saying. For ten years Dean was in limbo, just like me. He could look at his storybook life but he couldn't really touch it. He was starving to death, while I clung to him like a parasite, convinced what I'd given him was a gift he just didn't appreciate. It was my stupid ego at work again. I had to let him go. I couldn't save him. I had to let him save me, at least one more time.

Tessa put a hand on my shoulder. "And in his darkest hours, it will be you who lights his way with peace, and hope. He knows you will be in a better place. He knows you'll be there waiting. You'll be far more valuable to him if you just let him be."

After he regained his memories of her, Dean told me all about Tessa. She knows how to talk the talk. She's as passionate and convincing as a trial lawyer, but then, that's her job.

I didn't take much convincing.

* * *

My days here are spent with Jess, doing the things we'd always talked about, but never had the chance to do. Heaven is what you make of it, and we've made our way around the world and back more than once, experiencing all the wonders of God's creation. It's virtual reality, the Earth without all its current flaws. I see now why the angels are so pissed at humanity. Our world in its purest form is breathtakingly beautiful.

So is Jess. Every morning I wake up with her at my side. Every day I fall in love with her all over again. That's a high I've become addicted to without consequence. She laughs at how much I fawn over her, but she doesn't remember things like I do. There are times when we do nothing but spend the day in bed. I don't ever want to let her go again.

My nights in Heaven are different. The world I live in after sundown doesn't include Jessica. There's a bar, a roadhouse in the middle of nowhere, and that's where you'll find me. From dusk 'til dawn I'll be there, drinking beer, playing pool, and listening to Ash's bullshit. Sometimes Pamela will stop in for a drink between parties, or concerts, or whatever her Heaven consists of at that moment. Cas has been known to show up for a shot or two. His days spent as a fallen angel have left him with a taste for whiskey. He likes a good bourbon. Dean's influence no doubt. I haven't run into Ellen, or Jo, or my parents. I guess their Heavens don't include me, or seedy backwoods bars, or both.

Around midnight I'll grab a cold one and wander out onto the porch. I'll sit on the steps, or I'll lean against the railing, and I'll wait there until dawn draws me back to Jess again. I've never seen a car on the road that passes in front of the bar, but I know one day I will.

When that day does come I'll look up to see headlights on the road, and hear the rumble of an old V-8 engine. A long black Chevy will pull into the parking lot with a throaty roar, her tires skidding in the gravel, and I'll catch the muffled strains of classic rock through her darkened windows. There won't be any doubt in my mind who'll be in the driver's seat. It could be no one else but Dean.

He'll get out of the car and respond to my "what took you so long?" with nothing but a cocky grin. Then he'll snag _my_ beer, march up the steps into the Roadhouse, and start raising a little hell.

But not tonight. Tonight the road is silent.

So I wait.


End file.
